CHAPTER THIRTEEN - Overnighter
Ginny let her eyelids droop, let herself feel the sensation of his lips, surprisingly soft against the backs of her hands. For the moment, it didn't matter who he was, who she was, with whom she'd been.
It didn't even matter what had already transpired between them.
She felt something within her stir, and she opened her eyes wide. Ginny jerked her hands away from him and pressed them to her cheeks, which were suddenly heated, searing hot like the oven behind them.
Draco reached for her again, his brow furrowed in annoyance at her impertinent interruption. He'd wanted to pull her closer, wanted to kiss her just to try it out when they weren't both scratching at one another. He'd be hexed if he'd let her stop him.
"Don't," Ginny said quietly, seeing the determined intent in his eyes. "Please." She was willing to beg, if it would stop him from going through insincere motions of tenderness. She wouldn't be played the fool. She had allowed him to use her anger to trigger her lust, but she wouldn't allow him to use her loneliness the same way.
"Why not?" He sounded every inch the petulant, spoiled brat he'd once been. Really, only moments before he'd thought touching her the very epitome of a bad idea. Now, however, he had changed his mind. That was well within his right, wasn't it?
Even if she did look so… broken.
"I've never known you to act in any way you didn't mean," Ginny said, taking several steps back and sitting in one of the dining room chairs. "I beg of you, don't start now. I think-"
"There's the problem," Draco said, unable to keep the snide remark in check. He held up a hand before she could continue her protest-tirade, barricade, his mind supplied a dozen similar words. "We'll eat," he said, but she wasn't nearly daft-or flustered-enough to miss that it wasn't a concession.
She hoped, after some food, some conversation, he'd forget that tiny detail.
He refused to let her help serve, instead making a complete mess of things while stubbornly trying to carve the ham. A dozen scourgifies and a mangled ham later, he'd managed to fashion a half-dozen usable slices.
Seeing him struggle was almost enough to lift her spirits.
Ginny kept her eyes on her plate and took a bite, careful to keep her face blank. She didn't want to provoke his ego or his ire, depending on the condition of the food he'd prepared. He'd worked so hard, she was likely to compliment him even if-
"Bloody hell!" Her head snapped up at his epithet and she looked at him just in time to see him toss his fork down and snatch his goblet of wine, gulping it down. "What in Rowena's realm is wrong with that?"
Ginny watched him watching her as she sampled a bite. With some difficulty, she managed to chew and swallow. "I think," she finally managed, "You may have gotten carried away with whatever you used for a glaze." The ham was cloyingly sweet, the outer part of it tasting almost candied.
She took a sip of her wine and watched as his face turned a dangerous shade of red. His expression was completely unreadable, and she couldn't determine if he was embarrassed, angry, or simply upset. "Here, hang on," she said, suddenly feeling quite awful for him. He was trying, she couldn't fault him for that.
It was just that he was trying too many things.
Unthinkingly, she leaned across the table, took his knife and fork up from where he'd dropped them, and began to cut the edges off his ham. It was something her mother would have done for any of the children, or even for her husband if he looked to be daydreaming too much to do it himself.
Draco watched her, the hard blush of pure frustration fading from his cheeks as she made short work of the ham he'd cut. He wanted to be offended that she was touching his plate, but instead he was simply fascinated.
She kept her neck craned stiffly as though to keep the hair from falling over her shoulders, her thin, pale wrists just peeking from the belled sleeves of her jumper as she crossed his knife over his fork and set them on the edge of his plate.
He wanted to reach out a finger just to stroke the fragile-looking bone at the joint of her wrist, but instead he nodded stiffly. "I could have done that, you know," he stated, but it lacked the heat it usually did. Instead of snapping back, she simply shrugged and sat back down.
After a silence tense enough to cut right along with the ham, Ginny giggled. She bit her lip when he looked up at her, but it was as though a dam had broken. She shook her head, picking up her wine and holding it in front of her face like a shield so he couldn't see her.
Like anyone uncertain of a situation, he immediately assumed she was laughing at him, but her head-shaking negations indicated otherwise. Finally, when she'd calmed down save for a few spurts of giggles, she spoke.
"If we're lacking for dessert, we can just have this glaze."
It was getting difficult for Draco to keep up. It was quite uncommon for a woman to come to his house, apologize for shagging him, completely reject him, and then make a joke at his expense.
He really wasn't sure what he thought of that, exactly. "I can't be perfect at everything," he finally settled on stating, surprised when her laughter tapered off into a smile without even the smallest retort.
She wondered if he'd have been able to admit that when they were still at Hogwarts.
"Pansy's an interesting woman," Ginny said, busying herself by taking a helping of potatoes that she'd just barely deemed edible. It seemed a safe enough topic.
She'd completely forgotten what she'd written in her owl.
"Pansy," Draco drew the name out, putting volumes of meaning into the two syllables. In those two syllables, Ginny could hear love, detestation, impatience, worry, and… a question.
She didn't want any questions.
"You mentioned her in your owl," Draco said, rather pleased she'd managed to bring the subject around to matter a little less staid than the weather. "Unless you meant another employee of mine knew about us."
"There is no 'us'," Ginny answered automatically. "Pansy seems to have a ridiculous notion to the contrary, however." She took another bite of ham and was surprised to find herself enjoying it.
What she was not enjoying was the conversation.
"Why is that ridiculous?" He didn't particularly appreciate her tone. It was as though entertaining even the idea of a relationship with him aroused her ridicule. He was Draco Malfoy, for Merlin's sake. He had money. He had prestige. He was, no matter what Pansy said, much prettier than that Potter twit.
I've drunk too much too quickly, he judged, though he knew that was hardly the case. He was just… sick. He knew that already. It would pass.
"It's just ridiculous, Draco. We barely know one another, and we can barely stand one another." She couldn't even feel embarrassed now. It was just sad and stupid that she'd allowed what she had, considering they couldn't even come to an agreement over a meal.
"We had sex," he stated flatly, as though that explained everything. He'd have figured, for someone like her, it would explain everything. She didn't seem like the type to just casually shag a fellow and then stroll along.
"Everyone has sex," Ginny nearly shouted, exasperated. Why had she even brought Pansy into the conversation?
"Everyone doesn't have sex with me," Draco said, his eyes narrowed as he sat back in his chair with his glass clasped in one hand. "So, Miss Weasley, it seems we're at an impasse with our opinions."
He watched her flounder, flush, and grow flustered, and Draco thought about how he always enjoyed regaining the upper hand.
~~~
How it turned into a debate, she didn't know. She'd simply stated she thought they should come to a clear agreement about what they were-acquaintances-and what they weren't-lovers.
But he had to get all hung up in the technicalities.
Her head was reeling from wine and argument and the heat of the fireplace and quite possibly a near-coma brought on by all the sugar he'd dumped into his food, and after sinking into one of the sinfully comfortable chairs in front of his fireplace with the proclamation, "One failed spell doesn't make a Squib, and one fluke night doesn't make lovers!", she didn't realize until eleven at night that she was swiftly losing ground in the argument and that it was, indeed, night.
The enormous clock on the wall sang the time in a sweet, alto voice, cutting a swathe through their clamoring voices.
Ginny started and sat up, setting her wine on the arm of the chair and almost toppling it off before Draco grabbed it. "Merlin's knickers," she breathed. "It's that late already?
Draco wondered where a house elf was to take the glass from his hand and then cursed inwardly.
No house elves.
And all those dirty dishes were still on the table.
"It's that late already," he said finally. He'd been watching her the whole time, pleased with how she'd lashed back at him, with the gusto with which she argued. She seemed ebullient even in her annoyance, seemed whole for once. She was wrong in her side of things, of course, but it had been fun to argue with her. The wine had loosened her a bit, made her relax, cross her legs akimbo in his chair, her fingers mindlessly stroking the soft fabric of the arm as she made some point or other.
He'd watched the clock with half an eye, wondering if she'd notice the time. Now that she had, he regretted it, but he wasn't going to swallow his pride and ask her to stay, not after the argument she'd just given him.
"I should go," Ginny said, standing. She was proud of herself for not weaving. Her head felt a bit heavy.
Don't be in such a hurry, he thought, crossing to the window to see what the weather was like.
"Oh, bugger," he said, twitching back the heavy drapes. One of the big-eyed, wet-eared kids from the newspaper was sitting comfortably on the bench across the way, an improbably large camera slung around his neck.
He winked and waved at Draco, who shut the drapes quickly. How in the fuck had the little vulture known to come? Hadn't they already gotten the photo ops they'd wanted?
"We've a problem," Draco said slowly. "There's a reporter practically resting his arse on my stoop. You walk out this door at nearly midnight, he's going to start snapping shots." His mind worked ahead quickly, and he muttered a curse under his breath. It was one thing to make an appearance at a gala, but an entire other realm for someone to be posting articles about his tawdry love life.
He wasn't even getting any sex tonight, for Merlin's sake, he'd be damned if they printed it. It was like rubbing his nose in it.
"I'll Floo home," Ginny said slowly, as though speaking to a small child. "Don't be so overdramatic."
"I'm only networked to my offices," he said, rubbing his eyes.
"How social of you," Ginny said, trying to hold the sarcasm at bay and not quite succeeding.
She did not want to be imprisoned here.
Of all the ways she could have stayed, this wasn't quite what he'd imagined. Not that he'd been imagining her staying the night. Theoretically speaking, of course, this hadn't been an option.
Bugger.
"You called the newspaper," Ginny finally said, feeling quite sober suddenly. What would it look like if she were to walk out those doors? To her mum, her dad? To her brother? To Harry? "Unbelievable."
"Yes!" Draco proclaimed. Shite, his confidence in his sexual prowess wasn't so lacking he felt he needed to call for backup. "I was so intent on making you stay here that I called a bloody reporter. Get off it, Weasley, even shagging you isn't worth risking my company's image."
Now why, she thought, should that hurt her feelings?
"I should have gone home-" When? She couldn't even think of a pausing point in their conversation, they'd simply played off one another and let the whole thing snowball. It had gotten quite beyond their control, and now she was stuck in Malfoy Manor with the lord of the manor himself.
They stared at each other, Draco offended at her accusation and her blatant equation of staying a night there with a death sentence, and Ginny humiliated beyond any sense of words.
"I'm not sleeping with you," Ginny finally said. He had dozens of rooms, he could spare one for her, certainly.
"I should think not. You'd probably smother me in my sleep," Draco sneered in response.
Though smothering someone, he thought, sounded like a positively capital place to start when he next saw Pansy. Meddling bint.